St. Louis

John and I lived in Southern Illinois for 7 years while he got his PhD as a lot of you know and we came to St. Louis several times because we were only 3 hours away, but we never came to be tourists, so this was a first.  As any new tourist should do upon arriving in a new town, hit the biggest, most visible, most popular attraction the city has to offer... so up the arch we went.

And just like any other tourist business, we couldn't pick the weather for the day we were here, so we're going up in the rain.  I had been warned that the elevator up is disconcerting because you are going sideways, but you're seated in a neat pod that looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey, so I felt like my inner ear was prepared for something weird.  The pod also swings a little like a cable car as you go up, so that made it less taxing on the system. 

When we got to the top, a whole huge crowd was in line to go down on our cars, so there was John and I and a mother and her son (who were in town for the international robotics convention) for 30 minutes at the top.  It felt like you had the whole world to yourself...We ran from side to side and took hundreds of pictures, of the flooded Mississippi, the

stairs that disappear into the water where there are two roads that you can usually drive that are currently under water, the debris coming down the river, which included whole trees that gather against the bridges and boats.  We took multiple pictures of the city of St. Louis arrayed on the other side with clouds coming under the arch and into the city.  This is

surely the tallest monument that we have ever been up in.  Now,

don't get me wrong, skyscrapers are bigger, but this is just an arch, there's no floors underneath you and you feel like you are suspended in air.  I mean clouds were passing under us!!! It was beautiful and awe-inspiring.  We came back down after an hour up there which went very quickly and I have to say that the rangers and workers on the arch have a sense of humor.  They had to open a hatch in the bottom to work on something and were joking with us about "we have a loose bolt", after watching the video of the men making the arch and running around 600 feet up in the air without harnesses, I can see why they think this is funny.

This monument was elegant, beautiful, and I think one of the best reflections of its meanings that I have ever seen.  I can't believe that we came to this city multiple times and did not see this!!  Morons.  The museum of westward expansion is not impressive inside the floor, but the video was and the arch is worth everything.  We did have to go to the courthouse across the street from it when we were told that the Dred Scott case

 

 was first heard in it.  Not only were we able to see a court room similar to the one that heard this important case in American history, but the colors were unbelievable in the rotunda.  I mean, who would have thought to do a whole court house in pepto bismal pink?  It made the court room seem much less imposing and scary.  Some of the frescoes were done by

Wilmar and were stunning in their colors.  It was a great beginning to this day because it was so unexpectedly great.